1. Introduction
Children playing with cigarette lighters frequently cause fires which result in death or injury to themselves and others. Analysis of fire incidents caused by children playing with cigarette lighters indicates that disposable lighters are principally implicated in those fires in which the type of lighter could be determined and that the children involved are typically younger than six--most fires being caused by children three or four years old.
On May 3, 1985, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission ("CPSC") received a petition requesting and is presently engaged in a proceeding to establish regulations applicable to disposable lighters to make same child-resistant.
In response to media announcement of said petition, this inventor developed, as referenced above, successively improved embodiments of a child-resistant lighter, all of which embodiments are characterized by a certain basic concept. This document discloses embodiments patentably distinguishable from the earlier efforts but, at root, still based upon the same basic concept. The referred-to basic concept is described below. The terms contained within quotes are those consistently used in the above-referenced prior disclosures. The same terms have been used in the following statement in order to facilitate comparison with and documentation by the prior disclosures; but different terms are preferred herein for certain corresponding elements of the new embodiments.